25 Seriously Cult Movies You Need To See Before You Die
11. Attack Of The 50ft Woman (1958)
When a strange glowing object appears and a giant papier-mache hand pops out, heiress Nancy Archer (Allison Hayes), screams and runs back home to her husband. This turns out to be a bad idea, because two-timing Harry (William Hudson) has been planning to have her committed and steal her fortune, and all this talk about giant papier-mache hands does is put a gleam in his eye. Nancys situation becomes even more dire when radiation from the object causes Astonishing growth, so Hayes soon smashes through the roof and rampages across town, laying waste to a number of miniatures while shouting, Harry! I want my husband Harry! Transparent in long shots, solid in close-ups and a giant rubber hand at all other times, this scantily clad she-hulk outwits the comic relief deputy (A thirty foot giant? Oh no!), locates Harry and squashes him and his mistress to a pulp. So dismayed was director Nathan Juran (Twenty Million Miles To Earth) by the special effects that he took the billing Nathan Hertz, but while they may lack conviction, the central performances, especially the normally underused Hayes in her signature role, do not. Seek it out and enjoy it for what it is, and youll have a great time.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
